Can Kazakhstan’s Backup Routes Replace the CPC?

Short answer: Not quite.

The CPC moves roughly 50 million tons of Kazakh crude a year. All alternative routes combined moved around 4.5 million tons in 2025. That is the gap, and it is not a rounding error. It reflects how the entire export architecture was built around a single corridor.

The options, in order of relevance:

China pipeline (Atasu-Alashankou) holds the most untapped capacity of any alternative, around 8-9 million tons of unused annual space on the Kazakh side. Russia also ships around 10 million tons per year through the same line, so any significant increase in Kazakh volumes requires Russian agreement first. In December 2025, when drone strikes knocked out most of the CPC loading terminal at Novorossiysk, Kazakhstan redirected around 50,000 tons of Kashagan crude eastward. It was the first time Kashagan oil had ever moved via this route, proving the logistics work in practice. The constraint is scale: at roughly 85,000-86,000 tons per month, the pipeline moves less in a month than the CPC handles in a single day.

Druzhba to Germany has been growing. Germany’s PCK Schwedt refinery took 2.1 million tons in 2025, up from 1.5 million tons the year before. The problem is structural: Druzhba runs through Russia and Belarus before entering Poland. It swaps one Russian transit dependency for another.

BTC via Azerbaijan and Turkey is the only route that bypasses Russia entirely. Kazakhstan sent roughly 1.3-1.4 million tons this way in 2025, targeting 1.6 million tons in 2026. That covers about 3% of what the CPC moves annually. The constraint is not the BTC pipeline itself, which can handle up to 50 million tons per year. It is getting the oil across the Caspian. The sea is landlocked, there are no regional shipyards capable of building large tankers, and Aktau port is already near capacity.

Rail is a last resort. It can absorb short-term overflow and redeploy within days, which gives it an edge in a sudden crisis. But the cost premium is significant and it cannot replace pipeline volumes over any extended period.

The only option with structural scale is the Trans-Caspian Oil Pipeline, a proposed 700km undersea line from Kuryk to Baku with a design capacity of 20 million tons per year and an estimated cost of around $4 billion. It has been discussed since at least 2005 and was effectively shelved by 2020. Russia and Iran have consistently opposed it, using Caspian seabed disputes and environmental objections as leverage. Until the geopolitical environment shifts, it remains possible in principle but not actionable in practice.

Cordoba View

The scale gap is too large to close in the near term, and cost reinforces the dependency: BTC runs at roughly three times the per-barrel cost of the CPC, meaning companies will not voluntarily reroute unless the pipeline becomes unavailable. Kazakhstan’s export vulnerability is structural, not situational.